Criminally Underrated is a new series here at The Nerds Templar where we take a look at movies that are, well, criminally underrated. Maybe they weren’t box office hits, but gained a cult following later on with home video or streaming. Maybe they are films from big named directors/stars that don’t get the credit they deserve compared to their other films, but are just as good if not better. For whatever reason, they are criminally underrated.
I’m a single, childless, adult male, to say romantic comedies are not my jam is an understatement. Very few rom-coms get a first or second viewing from me beyond seeing them for review purposes, but for some reason Definitely, Maybe has always been one that stuck with me. I even own it on home video and popped it in to start this new series.
If you aren’t familiar with the film, Ryan Reynolds plays a dad going through a divorce whose daughter (Abigail Breslin) wants to know the story behind how he met her mother in the first place. He tells her this at bedtime, but changes names and some details she’s too young to hear to see if she can guess who her mother is throughout his tale. The story starts with Reynolds in college in the 1990s then moving to New York City to work on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. As a 90s lover myself, the story taking place during the last great decade is positive number one. There are also fantastic Nirvana/Kurt Cobain references throughout the film adding to its 90s gloriousness.
Positive number two is Reynolds and Breslin are delightful together. The film is from 2008 so Reynolds would be in his early 30s in real life with Breslin about age 11 or so during filming. You can see them being father and daughter with both playing off each other extremely well. She was introduced to sex ed in school and has all kinds of questions for her dad and kind of thinks he’s a male slut throughout his story. She’s appalled that he smoked and drank when he was younger because let’s be honest, no one thinks of their parents as real people before they were parents.
Then there is the female cast of potential mothers that Reynolds’ character dated or talked about. They are played by Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz and Elizabeth Banks. All three are fantastic actresses and handle comedy well. All three get great scenes with Reynolds and you understand why someone as good looking as him would get three beautiful women. Fisher and Banks might be more known for comedy than Weisz, but she holds her own especially with scenes with Kevin Kline (who steals every second he’s in the film). Along with Kline other side characters are played by Derek Luke, Adam Ferrara, Liane Balaban, Kevin Corrigan, Annie Parisse and more.
You might be asking yourself how you might not be familiar with this movie especially with this cast, but you have to remember, after Van Wilder and Waiting… and before Deadpool/cell phone company/gin company/soccer team/world domination, Ryan Reynolds had a weird sort of time period in his career. He’s obviously a handsome man that Hollywood wanted to turn into a romantic lead and he’s hysterical so rom-coms could have been his go-to paycheck ala Matthew McConaughey, but Ryan did a slew of films a lot of fans don’t remember. Along with this movie if you look at his filmography of the time, do you remember The Nines, Chaos Theory, Paper Man, Fireflies in the Garden? Sure The Proposal came out a year later, but 2007-2008 Ryan Reynolds is much different than 2023 Ryan Reynolds.
Definitely, Maybe is a forgotten gem from a genre that isn’t for me. It’s charming and sweet. It’s laugh out loud funny (especially the Bill Clinton stuff). It’s a great time period, not only the decade the story takes place, but the time in your life where you truly discover who you are as a person. That post college life, first real job, first real relationship era gets ignored a lot in movies. Hollywood focuses on high school coming-of-age plots when age 22-25 is much more important to who you actually become in the real world. Reynolds starts out as an idealist who’s going to change the world and be president, but by film’s end is just another divorced dad. But he loves his daughter and she loves him and sometimes that’s just more important than changing the world.
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